


A Gentleman's Excuse Me

by loversandantiheroes



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Plunkett and Macleane (1999)
Genre: Anyelle, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Physical Abuse, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loversandantiheroes/pseuds/loversandantiheroes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So it seems this is gong to be a mish-mash of a few ideas for P&M related things I wanted to do, so lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, expect more of this.</p>
<p>A retelling of Plunkett & Macleane, with Belle as the prostitute Plunkett saves from Chance.  I have plans for this one.</p>
<p>The title comes from a song by the Scottish songwriter Fish, formerly of Marillion, and like a lot of his love songs it’s wordy but lovely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Gentleman's Excuse Me

The place was making him nervous. Nevermind the heist they had just pulled off, nevermind tearing down narrow alleys in the dark with the law running hot behind, his ears full of the crashing thunder of horse’s hooves on cobblestone and the rush of his own blood. There was a joyous exhilaration in that, a feeling of exultation, of  _life_  he hadn’t felt in years.

But here, sitting outside a whore’s bedchamber waiting for his go, here Plunkett felt he couldn’t be more uncomfortable if he was dangling from a hangman’s noose. Shifting uneasily and scratching at his sweating palms, he wished not for the first time that Macleane would just hurry the fuck up already. They had come here to hide, not commiserate, but Macleane had insisted it would be far too suspicious for a young gentleman to enter such an establishment and not indulge himself.

Plunkett rubbed his nose. The sounds of the place were bad enough - the ridiculous bawdy warbling of the singer downstairs, the laughter of the drunken fools, the forced giggling the girls gave in response, the animal-like grunting that the thin walls of the boudoirs couldn’t keep in - but the smell was worse, something caught between pleasure parlor and sickroom. Sweat, come, tobacco, cheap perfume, cheaper drink, and an underlying note of dirt and piss and filth no amount of perfume could mask. It was so thick and cloying he thought he could set up a still here in the fucking hall and bottle the scent.

The sounds made his head hurt, the smell made his stomach turn, the girls made his balls ache. Plunkett was not at all comfortable with the mingling sensations. He rubbed wearily at his face, listening to the scratch-and-rasp of his stubble against the calluses on his palm. Everything seemed to make him think of Mary. When he breathed in the stink of the place he thought of Mary, pale and trembling under filthy bed linens as the fever burned her up from the inside. A girl walked by, close enough for her bustle - and oh she wore so little besides - to ruffle his hair and with a helpless sort of clenching he thought of Mary, his lovely Mary beneath him in their bed with her hair spilled across the pillow and her legs locked around his hips, pulling him into her deeper.

A shudder ran through him, and for an awful moment Plunkett wasn’t sure if he was going to be sick or come in his trousers.

The door at the end of the hall crashed open and a girl stumbled out, sobbing, looking somehow more naked in her knickers and stays and rolled stockings than if she’d been wearing nothing at all. A pair of panniers flapped at her hips, giving her the absurd look of a scantily clad pack mule. Her face was half-hidden behind a falling curtain of hair, elaborate curls coming awkwardly undone, but Plunkett could see a garish smear of red across her mouth that could’ve been rouge but seemed more likely to be blood.

“ _Please…._ " she sobbed, the word almost swallowed up in tears. " _P…please sir, please!_ ”

A broad, bald, lumpy man dressed absurdly in a corset and breeches thundered after her, snarling, and suddenly the girl shrieked as she was snatched back by her hair.

“ _COME BACK HERE!_ ”

He struck her across the face - the sound as dry and brisk as wood cracking - and flung the girl against the wall hard enough to rattle a covered china hutch on the opposite end of the hall.

For a moment Plunkett couldn’t move, he sat with his mouth agape and his hands folded, unable to process what he was seeing.  
Chance.

His mind flashed and he saw Rob lying gut-shot against the carriage in the dark. He had fled into the woods but not fast enough to escape the boy’s screams when Chance had found him.

_Chance._

The bastard cocked back a pudgy fist and drove it into the girl’s side as she tried to turn from him, the stiffened cloth of the stays crackling under the blow. She made a soft _uh!_ sound as the air left her lungs. A fine mist of blood sprayed from her lips, leaving a pinkish patch on the white wall.

_Fucking Chance._

Another flash and suddenly all he could see was Mary, his lovely Mary, lying in the snow with her dress torn and her face a bloodied mess, reaching for him with trembling hands, looking up at him with one good eye and smiling an apologetic smile as if to say  _I’m sorry my love, please don’t be cross with me, I tried._

The girl in the hallway shuddered in a deep breath, trying to cry for help. No sound came from her bloodied mouth, but Plunkett heard her scream just the same. It echoed and rattled in his brain, and he was unsurprised to find that it sounded like Mary’s voice.

Chance drew his fist back again, ready to land a blow to her kidneys and drop the girl where she stood cowering, and then Plunkett was on his feet, shouting, wrenching Chance’s arm back.

“ _OI! LEAVE HER! FUCKING LEAVE HER!_ ”

Chance spun, tossing the girl away. She hit the far wall, scrabbling for purchase on the wainscoting. But her balance didn’t hold, and she dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes and huddled up against a covered wardrobe with her face against the wall. He grabbed for Plunkett, two fists full of his jacket, meaning to fling him into the far wall, but Plunkett grappled for the man’s snarling, lumpy face, thinking of Rob as Macleane had dug him up, of the misshapen hole where an eye should have been. Chance grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked, wrenching his head back, leaving him to grope blindly for the bastard’s eyes. Chance shoved and Plunkett hit the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth - soft and saggy ‘round the middle but he still had a bull’s strength - and punched him hard in the stomach.

Plunkett was down only for a second, and before Chance had the opportunity to land any blow that would keep him down Plunkett was back up and on him, the curved edge of his knife aiming for the doughy flesh of Chance’s face.

"Oh Jesus,  _Plunkett no!_ " Macleane cried, and then Plunkett was being pulled back, his knife still wavering at Chance’s face. "No! No no, no! Not here, not now!"

The hall was suddenly filled with people in various states of undress all trickling from private rooms to get a view of the spectacle. A tall fop with a crooked wig stepped forward, clumsily trying to stuff himself back into a pair of half-done breeches. “What’s going on here?” he demanded with the kind of pomposity only the noble born can summon up.

Silence settled in, Chance so outraged, so scandalized that he couldn’t yet speak. At last he found his voice and hissed, “This, this  _vermin_  threatened me with a knife.”

Plunkett grinned, clutching the handle of the blade compulsively. “Yeah? Next time it won’t be a threat.” Images flashed through his mind in rapid fire. Rob, Mary, the girl. Rob, Mary, the girl.

_Next time I’ll cut your fucking eyes out_ , he thought.

"I demand satisfaction," Chance said, no longer looking at Plunkett, but at Macleane, unable to stomach the idea of addressing the vermin that very nearly carved his face up like a turnip. "Tomorrow at dawn."

Macleane’s voice was carefully controlled. “This man is my servant. Etiquette forbids it.”

“ _Fuck that!_ " Plunkett shouted. Shock registered in the other man’s eyes, and Plunkett grinned wider. Chance wasn’t wholly stupid, he knew the rules of etiquette as well as Macleane did. He had expected the  _vermin_  to beg, to bow and scrape and make excuses, to hide behind the rule that would save his skin. The idea that he would accept the challenge, insist on it, even, hadn’t occurred to him.

Furious, Chance stalked back to his room, shoving his way through the crowd and snarling at anyone who didn’t move out of his way quick enough. The door slammed shut behind him.

Murmuring, the crowd slipped back into their respective rooms, and soon the only ones left in the hall were Plunkett, Macleane, and the girl, still huddled against the wardrobe and weeping.

"Here," Macleane said quietly, pressing a clean handkerchief into Plunkett’s hand and nodding at the girl. "I’ll make a gentleman of you yet, Plunkett."

Finally catching a breath, Plunkett muttered his thanks and knelt beside the girl. A tentative hand on her shoulder elicited a harsh sob.

Plunkett winced and withdrew his hand. “Hey, hey it’s alright, love. The bastard’s gone.”

Slowly she turned her face from the wall, and Plunkett felt his heart sink. Just a few bare minutes before she had been a lovely girl. Now one eye was turning purple and rapidly swelling shut, the other stared at him tremulously, a bright watery blue under a tangle of brown hair. Blood trickled from her nose and from her mouth, a darkening, drying smear of it across her cheek. Her lips were swelling where Chance’s strike had mashed them against her teeth.

Plunkett swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. “What’s your name?” he whispered.

"B…Belle," she answered, almost too soft to hear. The inside of her mouth was bloody. Plunkett pressed the handkerchief against the seeping split on her lip. "Why did you do it?" she asked, her one wide tearful blue eye a stark contrast against all that red.

Plunkett rocked on his heels. “I couldn’t let him do that to you, could I? Man who’d treat a woman like that is no man at all.”

A tear spilled from her good eye as she shook her head sadly. “He’s gonna kill you.”

Plunkett’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Not if I kill him first.”


End file.
